Sir, – In “A rural scene that’s dead and gone” accompanying a 1983 photograph of a manual turf-cutter, Arminta Wallace summarises the current impasse on boglands as: “The thing is, it’s not wrong to cut all bogs: just protected bogs. It’s also wrong to stop people from cutting bogs they’ve cut for generations, without appropriate consultation or compensation” (Magazine, June 29th). She’s right, but both machine-cutting of turf and bog conservation measures go back more than a generation.
Some 35 years ago, a bog purchased by An Taisce at Ahascragh for conservation was damaged by adjacent development, and Bord na Móna agreed to substitute another prime site, Mongan Bog near Clonmacnoise, for conservation. In 1982 a packed public meeting chaired by Prof Frank Mitchell led to the formation of the Irish Peatland Conservation Council. Around the same time Bord na Móna offered a number of bogs owned by it to the nation for conservation.
The environmental protection measures concerning bogs in the Single European Act were explained at a 1986 conference in Tullamore, not yesterday. Very few bogs are now in good condition, but since there is twice as much peatland in Ireland as there are forests, provision of alternative sites for cutting should not be a problem. Last Saturday’s day of action, in which “volunteers” machine-dug turf on protected’ bogs, will have inflicted permanent damage to a lot of sites.
So why has this situation been allowed to fester for more than a generation, and provide an opening for political opportunism? – Yours, etc,
JULIAN REYNOLDS PhD,
Emeritus Fellow TCD,
Weirview Drive,
Stillorgan, Co Dublin.